Advanced Inspection Technologies

TIC is constantly looking ofr technical and technological innovations and progress ; we are committed to implement the latest advanced inspection techniques and solutions,in order to comly our client’s hiegh expectations. Due to our highly qualified staff and our vast stock of equipment and instruments with the latest technological innovation, we are able to offer a service of the highest quality with added value, given you the possibility to control risks, and reduce time and cost of constraction and inspection.

Principle

TICs advanced inspection techniques offer solutions using the latest inspection technologies and are used extensively in the industry field for a high degree of reliability, which supports improved safety, drives productivity, increases process availability and helps meet regulatory compliance standards.

Eddy Current

Eddy-current test uses electromagnetic induction to detect flaws in conductive materials. The eddy current test set-up consists of a circular coil which is placed on the test surface. The alternating current in the coil generates changing magnetic field which interacts with the conductive test surface and generates eddy current. The flow of eddy current can be disrupted due to change in resistivity or conductivity, magnetic permeability or any physical discontinuities. The change in eddy current flow and a corresponding change in the phase and amplitude is measured against known values.

Eddy current test method can detect very small cracks in or near the surface of the material, the surfaces need minimum preparation. The biggest advantage of the eddy current test method is that it can be employed to determine surface flaws on painted or coated surface. Eddy current flaw detection is commonly used in the aerospace industry, crane industry, concrete pumping industry and other general industries where the protective surface coating cannot be removed.
The principle of eddy current test which measures the change in resistivity in the conductive material makes it useful in wide range of applications such as conductivity measurement, sorting of material, assessment of heat treatment condition, sorting of materials on the basis of hardness and strength, thickness measurement of thin components.

Acoustic Emission

The Acoustic Emission Non Destructive Testing (AE) consists in detecting ultrasonic waves emitted by the noise generated by the release of energy in a structure under mechanical loading.

This technique needs to create a mechanical constraint on the test piece, a physical failure emitting an acoustic wave then the reception of acoustic signals by a network of ultrasonic transducers in contact with the component. Once recorded and processed, the signals allows locating a flaw by using triangulation algorithm.

Several phenomena can be sources of acoustic emission:

The propagation of a crack

A delamination or a fiber breaking in composite structures

A plastic deformation

Some corrosion development.

The release of constraints in welds.

Some fluid or gas leakage.

Acoustic Emission is particularly used for the control of pressure equipments as well as storage tanks or some large aeronautic structures.

Guided Wave

Guided Wave Testing uses low frequency waves, which travel along the pipe. This provides close to 100% coverage of the inspected pipe length. It measures changes (=reflections) per cross section.

In standard application, tens of meters of piping may be inspected from a single location. Affected areas are precisely located in terms of distance from the transducer ring and in terms of clock position. These areas are highlighted for further local examination by visual or other conventional NDT methods and can be monitored with Guided Wave Testing.

This non-destructive screening technique can be used without extensive scaffolding and minimizes the requirement of removing insulation along the piping.

Time Of Flight Diffraction (TOFD)

The TOFD technique (Total Of Flight Diffraction) is an effective fully computerized inspection method for the detection and assessment of flaws. This technique uses diffraction instead of reflection, as type, location, geometry or orientation of the anomalies is often irrelevant for detection and assessment.

The TOFD technique uses a transmitter and receiver placed on equal distances of the weld focused at the same location in the weld. The scanner with the probes is often moving quickly parallel to the weld. A transmitter sends compression waves into the material with a high bandwidth. The compression wave will propagate through material from the sender to the receiver. The first signal to arrive the receiver is the wave near the surface traveling towards; this wave is called a lateral wave. Because of the bandwidth the wave will also bounce back from the back wall, differences in time give an accurate wall thickness reading and will be used for time base calibrations. When the beam encounters an anomaly, diffraction signals will occur on the edges of the indication. An upper tip diffraction (or reflection of indications with a volume) will mark the top of an indication. A lower tip diffraction of an opposite phase will occur from the bottom of the indication. Flaw size, position, location, and/or shape are relatively irrelevant for the TOFD technique. The diffracted signals will be sent to the receiver, the differences in time path will give a very accurate measurement of the through wall height of the anomaly.

Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing

Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT) is a more recent and advanced method of executing ultrasonic scans. In place of a single transducer element, phased array systems employ an array of elements that can be sequentially, or rather separately, pulsed. This implies that it is possible, through the creation of interfering wave patterns, to electronically manipulate beams so that their direction and angle can be controlled. This enables capabilities such as more precise software control, inspection from multiple angles, and the inspection of complex geometries.